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I’ve been attempting to practice patience lately. I’ve been told that I’m way too impatient, especially with the tv remote. Technology has enabled me to have some things in a nanosecond and I have gotten used to it. Waiting at a traffic light seems like it takes forever, when it is really only 45-60 seconds. I could go through my email in that amount of time but I don’t have a phone that does email. Oh, well. It seems like everything is speeded up nowadays. Kids talk so fast I usually have to ask them to repeat what they said, slower and in English. Words are abbreviated for the sake of expediency as well. I’d hate to be a school teacher and have to deal with a room full of children with this kind of limited attention span. The educators of today are truly warriors. Not that they weren’t when I was in school, just a different kind. When I was in grade school (yeah, yeah…a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…) children were basically all taught the same thing in the same manner. First grade served to weed out the “A” students from the others. …

I’ve been attempting to practice patience lately. I’ve been told that I’m way too impatient, especially with the tv remote. Technology has enabled me to have some things in a nanosecond and I have gotten used to it.

A longtime friend of mine is battling Hepatitis C. He’s currently on his second round of treatment. Besides the nastiness of the drugs used to treat the disease, he is struggling with another aspect of his treatment.

Seriously, I’ve been wanting to quit smoking. For years now. I’ve been one of those off-and-on smokers since I was a teenager. I would quit when I was pregnant and stay quit for years at a time. Once I had such a bad Tequila hangover that I quit cold turkey with no problem because the thought of cigarettes made me puke. My main problem is that I get psychotic when I try to quit. One of my daughters actually told me to have a cigarette when I was losing it. So, why do I keep smoking even though I hate it? Because I’m addicted to nicotine. Cigarettes are the only thing I know of that are horrible for your health, stink, are highly addictive and completely legal. They are sold using fraudulent marketing practices and target a young audience hoping for lifelong customers. Cigarette companies make billions of dollars yearly, minus the kickbacks to legislators. I would like to see cigarette tax dollars go towards nicotine recovery centers, much like the recovery centers available for heroin, crack and meth users. A legal addiction is still an addiction so why not? Well, because the industry would go broke if nobody smoked …

When I was in high school, my sociol- ogy teacher asked members of the class to raise their hand if they wanted to live to age 20. Everybody’s hand went up. “How about 30?” Again the whole class raised their hand. She increased the amount by 10: “40?, 50?, 60?” By 50 most of the hands stayed down. When she got to 70, 80, 90 only myself and Mike Richardson had our hands up. I don’t think it was that we were unafraid to get old, maybe just afraid of dying. I didn’t know much about “old” people then. My mother’s perspective was col- ored by her intense anxiety and fear about everything. She told me that old people had germs and that I shouldn’t touch them or I’d get sick. All of my relatives lived far away, so I didn’t get to experience their lives changing as they aged. I believe that this society considers elderly people as an inconvenience. All those tax dollars going to health care and housing. I think that they are hidden away as a convenience to those who are in denial of being old one day. Other cultures revere their elders as an irreplaceable …

WINSLOW – The County Extension Homemakers’ Council started in Washington county in 1912 with a $1500 grant from the USDA. A part of the University of Arkansas’ Cooperative Extension Service, its goal was to educate residents with home demonstrations of canning, sewing, gardening and introducing new practices or technology to homemakers and farmers. Winslow resident Billie Sue Hughes believes the charter in Winslow started in 1962. She joined in 1964 or 1965 where she took classes on canning. She said the county office, which is now located at the Washington County Fairgrounds property, can teach you about whatever it is you want to learn from knitting to planting. The Win- slow group includes Ellen Center, Shirley Nesbitt and Fleeta Clark. “There’s so many old women. I don’t know what the average age is, but it’s oooooold,” laughs Hughes. She thinks the youngest member is in her 60s. She says that women retire and want something to do or want to learn something new. The group has always had an average of ten members. The monthly meeting is in the daytime so the ladies don’t have to drive at night. They are also a non-profit service organization. Their main source of …

We’re having a mild winter, and every time I hear that I listen for the other snowshoe to drop and the blizzard to start. Yes, I’m superstitious. The ones I practice or the ones that have proven to be true. Sometimes there are scientific reasons for them. Whether or not the groundhog sees his shadow, it will still be winter until the Vernal equinox on March 20. The groundhog, or woodchuck, is a media personality one day a year. What kind of a shadow can Punxsutawney Phil see anyway with all the camera flashes going off in his face? This is not science, rocket or other. There is a lot of folklore and superstition addressing seasons and weather. Thicker than usual fur on raccoons and skunks indicates a severe winter. Folks in the Ozarks check out the color of the breastbone of a wild goose that was killed in Autumn. We slice persimmons open for a Winter forecast. Since I know not to approach a member of the weasel or any other of the small carnivore families, and I don’t have a dead goose, I go with the persimmons. The time-tested “Farmers’ Almanac” says we’re going to have a mild …